First Person: “A fiery black gash on the North Tower”

I was crossing 6th Avenue, reading in the New York Post about the Mariners’ 104th win of the season–Freddy Garcia had thrown eight scoreless innings–when I heard a noise that I immediately recognized as a jet passing very low. Had I looked up and to my right, I would’ve been a live eyewitness to the World Trade Center attacks.

Instead, I looked directly overhead, saw nothing, and continued to my 10th floor office. I was still flipping through the paper a few minutes later when a co-worker came to my door and asked: “Have you heard anything about a plane flying into the World Trade Center?”

“No,” I said. Then, rather flippantly, I added: “But we can pull up my blinds and look.” My office window faced south, right at the W.T.C. And so I yanked up the Levolor blinds, revealing an image that’s as clear to me ten years later as it was that day: A fiery black gash on the North Tower.

A plane had flown into the World Trade Center. It had to be an accident, of course. We hastened to the antenna television in the conference room to learn more. A few minutes later, while looking at a live shot of the towers, we saw another plane come into view. Then, static. Had I been watching cable television, I would’ve been a live TV-witness to the World Trade Center attacks.

Instead, I thought the plane I’d seen on the screen was a military craft of some sort–dispatched on a rescue mission, perhaps. Then my co-worker turned on the radio and we learned that the plane we saw was another passenger jet. It had flown into the South Tower, the tower with the TV broadcast antennas on it, knocking the slightly-time-delayed broadcast off the air before the second attack could be transmitted. Not that it mattered. What mattered was, the attack was deliberate. And that’s when I got scared.

Calls to my parents in Seattle wouldn’t go through. (The only other time that happened to me? In the seconds after The Double.) Email worked, but they didn’t have it yet, and so I asked a friend to call my folks and let them know I was alright. And–I don’t remember this, but my friend insists it’s true–I added a warning: “Don’t go outside today. Don’t go near the Space Needle, or Downtown, or any of the bridges. Just stay home.”

From my office window, I could see the South Tower lurching, as if it was broken in the middle. In fact, it was. We’d hooked up a cable TV, and watched as a local TV reporter got engulfed in ash. I went back to the window. The tower wasn’t there anymore. Just a huge cloud of smoke.

I made it home a few hours later. The smell: That’s what I’ll never forget. My Brooklyn apartment was less than two miles from Ground Zero, as the crow flies. Or, on that day, as the smell of pulverized building materials, office supplies, and human remains flew. (Also, miscellaneous papers from destroyed offices. My roommate went up to the roof and collected some. We later threw them away, deciding that they were too morbid.)

I spent the evening watching CNN. There was so much we still didn’t know. My last memory of that day was in bed, listening to NPR, and hearing the news anchor say that the city was awaiting shipment of more than 20,000 body bags.